


Wintergreen

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: Brucemas 2020 [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Christmas Party, First Meetings, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mistletoe, Oblivious Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, POV Third Person, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Science Nerd Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28151190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: "We're not so different, you know. You avoid getting angry and I avoid the eighth most spoken language on the planet."Or, how an unlikely meeting leads to an even more unlikely relationship, and Steve and Tony still can't figure out how it happened.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/James "Bucky" Barnes
Series: Brucemas 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2056074
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46
Collections: Brucemas 2020





	Wintergreen

**Author's Note:**

> So I made the title for pun reasons, but wouldn't it be an epic Bruce/Bucky ship name? Just thoughts... 
> 
> Day 5, for the Bucky/Bruce pairing and the prompt "mistletoe"

In hindsight, maybe Bruce shouldn’t have chosen the living room if he’d wanted peace and quiet.

The room had been empty for the past hour or so he’d been there, curled up on one of the couches with his headphones on and a tablet balanced in his lap, watching the simulation of one of his latest projects play out and occasionally pausing it to make changes. The couch was comfortable, the room was silent except for the faint sounds of the growing snowstorm out the window, and he hadn’t seen any other occupants of the Tower since that morning at breakfast: the perfect environment for some relaxation and some negative baryonic antiparticles.

Or at least it had been.

Bruce looked up from his screen at the sound of a door banging open, a pair of voices drifting in to match the sudden incoming footsteps, and a few seconds later, Steve and Tony appeared, snowflakes melting in their hair and pink flushing their cheeks and already in a full-force discussion before they’d even taken off their coats.

They didn’t seem to notice Bruce—which might have had something to do with the fact that he was wrapped in a blanket in the most shadowy corner of the couch, but hey, it was the closest spot to the radiator. Bruce didn’t move as they made themselves at home on one of the other couches and continued whatever on earth it was they were arguing about. 

No, he did not plan on intervening on this one. Considering that the last several bouts of “creative differences” between the two most stubborn Avengers had been about S.H.I.E.L.D.’s caller ID, the ownership of a pair of Captain America socks, normal goose migration patterns, and whether or not Tony’s decision to go radio silent the last time they were in the field was a direct cause of Clint’s latest broken bone, Bruce was fairly confident that they could handle it themselves. In fact, it was probably better to let them handle it themselves.

He knew Steve and Tony’s banter was just that: banter. There was no real animosity in it; there hadn’t been since the team had first met on the helicarrier, and it was safe to say that those had been unusual circumstances. When he’d moved in to the Tower, Bruce had had to get used to a lot of things, and squabbling over nothing barely ranked at all next to the assassins who communicated via deadly weaponry, the thunder god who gave off a static shock whenever it got a little humid, the two flying metal suits who had a tendency to dive-bomb any unsuspecting person on the balcony, and the likelihood of accidentally stepping on a loose robot.

But still.

He’d prefer it if they didn’t argue five feet away from where he was trying to work.

Bruce adjusted the wire of his headphones and debated turning the volume up as his teammates’ voices grew louder in the background. They still hadn’t noticed him there; Steve was pretending to fiddle with the TV remote while Tony leaned so close over his shoulder that the barest turn of Steve’s head would flick his ear against Tony’s nose. Both of them talking over each other all the while—Bruce wasn’t bothering to catch every word, but what he did hear made him wonder if even Steve and Tony knew what they were arguing about anymore.

Either way, they sure didn’t seem like they planned on stopping.

“Nope. Nope, you can’t say that. You’re splitting hairs, that’s what you’re doing—”

“All I’m saying is if you were in that situation, you would’ve made the same call.”

“First of all, that actually wounds your argument. That  _ lessens _ the credibility, Rogers. And second of all: no, I would not have, because I can fly and therefore would not have gotten into that situation.”

“And you call  _ me _ out for splitting hairs.”

“Okay, you wanna talk about  _ in that moment _ ; we can do that, we can have a little mental exercise—although, if you have to construct this elaborate hypothetical world in order to entrap me, I might just doubt the soundness of your logic.”

“I’m just trying to get you to understand the limits I was in;  _ why _ that was the call I had to make—”

“ _ But you  _ didn’t  _ have to… _ ”

“— _ and _ you’re already working with advantages; I didn’t have a weaponized suit of impenetrable armor or a billion IQ.”

“Aw, you’re sweet. Although I might point out that I can’t lift a train with my bare hands, so it probably evens out.”

“I have not lifted a train.”

“Have so. I saw you and Blondie messing around after that fight at the railyard.”

“That wasn’t the whole train, that was the engine. Although I appreciate your faith in me, Stark.”

“I swear that was part of the song. ‘Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American train—’”

That was about when Bruce decided he couldn’t take it anymore. 

He slipped his headphones down to the back of his neck and stood up, casting a glance at the other couch as he headed for the door. Either Steve and Tony still didn’t notice him, or they were too preoccupied to say anything. He was betting on the latter, given how Steve had picked up the TV remote again and was keeping his finger pressed down on the volume button as Tony continued to talk practically into his ear.

Bruce lingered by the door for a half second, giving his teammates one last chance to acknowledge his presence, before shaking his head and stepping out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him with pointed force. It clicked loudly, but there was no response from the other side.

The hallway was as silent as a tomb compared to the room he’d just left, and it didn’t take long for his gaze to drift down toward the tablet in his hand. He’d really been hoping to finish up this portion of his project today, but the living room was clearly no longer a conducive workspace. It would probably be a better idea to take this up to the lab—

— _ and what the hell is that? _

Bruce swore the hallway had been empty a few seconds ago, but then again, he had only been looking at eye level. If he’d looked any lower, maybe he wouldn’t have started when he noticed the dark shape hunched on the floor two feet away like some kind of bizarre shadowy gremlin creature.

(Or maybe he would have. That kind of thing tended to disconcert) 

A year or so ago, something like this might’ve made him tense up, back for the nearest exit, or start cataloguing escape routes, but now he’d spent too long living in the same building as Natasha and Clint to be startled at someone appearing out of nowhere. 

This wasn’t Natasha or Clint, though.

The figure on the floor shifted, dark hair falling across their face as the sleeve of their hoodie pushed up slightly to reveal the glint of silvery metal.

That was enough to confirm it: this was Steve’s friend. The one who’d moved in a few months ago, after the whole… the whole  _ whatever _ it was, with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fury and Nazis (?) and helicarriers programmed to take out half the planet. Twenty-seven tenths of the planet? Bruce wasn’t too clear on the details. Natasha hadn’t said much about it, and what she had said had been heavy with the dryness of some inside jokes he wasn’t part of. Steve’s explanation had been worse, if that was possible: frustrated and listless and given from a hospital bed after Bruce and Tony had finally been allowed inside by a guy Bruce would later know as Sam.

(Yes, he and Tony had been the only ones who’d had to deal with hospital security—Natasha had naturally found some way to sneak in, Thor had been… otherwise occupied, and Clint had never shown up at all, not to Bruce’s knowledge. Which—okay, he knew the guy never read his texts, but one would think he’d at least flick on the news once in a while). 

The official reports hadn’t been too clear either—all the news stations had been mostly focused on the fallout, the destruction and chaos and leaking of hundreds of secure files into general public view, and never had they mentioned the  _ how _ and  _ why _ all of it had happened. And S.H.I.E.L.D.—well, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? They couldn’t go to S.H.I.E.L.D. for information anymore, because S.H.I.E.L.D. was currently in the same state as those aforementioned helicarriers crashed in a burning wreck in the Potomac. Maybe, maybe, they could salvage it, but… did they really want to?

(Bruce didn’t. Not that anyone had asked him his opinion, but… yeah, no).

The news reports had paused in their relay of events only to mention that the superhero organization known as the Avengers seemed to have integrated two new members in the aftermath of what had gone down in D.C. Tony had joked that Steve was getting as bad as Barton with the new recruits, but Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes had fit in surprisingly seamlessly among the group.

Well. Maybe not  _ that _ surprisingly.

After all, a retired soldier with flying capabilities and a reformed brainwashed assassin couldn’t  _ possibly _ have anything in common with the rest of the Avengers. 

And now said reformed brainwashed assassin was crouched in front of Bruce (he was still on the floor, for whatever reason) and staring up at him with a slightly narrowed look that made Bruce suspect it hadn’t been as easy to shake off the Hydra training as Steve had let the media believe.

Finally, Bruce broke the silence, since it didn’t look like Barnes was planning to. “Hi.”

Bucky tilted his head before apparently remembering something and pulling a pair of earbuds from his ears. Even though Bruce couldn’t hear whatever had been coming out of them, the hallway seemed to get quieter anyway. “Hey.” He nodded backwards at the living room door. “How long’ve they been going?”

“Honestly… I lost track.” Bruce studied the other man carefully. He looked like he’d been hunkered down here for some time, and while it was a little odd that he’d chosen the hall instead of any of the other rooms, his outward appearance didn’t suggest discomfort (Bruce supposed that after being mind-controlled by Hydra for seven decades, everything else was put in perspective). 

Especially once he gave that half smile. “Yeah, once Stevie gets going on something, it’s usually better just to take a step back.”

“I’d say Tony’s the same way,” Bruce said. “Except usually I’d rather  _ he _ take the step back.”

“Ha.” Bucky slumped further against the wall, using it as a sort of backrest. “No wonder he and Steve get along so well.”

Bruce wasn’t sure if that was meant to be sarcastic or not, and so he nodded to the earbuds instead. “What band?”

Bucky looked confused for a half second before he followed Bruce’s gaze. “It’s not music.” He slid his phone from his front hoodie pocket and unplugged the earbuds so that for a moment the sound echoed out of the phone’s speakers. Bruce only caught a few words about gas crises and economic recessions before Bucky plugged the earbuds back in and the sound disappeared. “Gotta catch up somehow. I’m almost at the nineteen eighties.”

“Huh.” Bruce nodded. What else was he supposed to say?  _ That’s great? _

He settled for, “I mean, if you did want to listen to music, that’s a pretty good place to start.”

“Sam said the same thing.” Bucky stuffed his phone back in his pocket before looking up at Bruce again. “What are you doing?”

The question surprised him a little bit—or not exactly the question itself, but more the fact that Bucky seemed to be asking out of genuine curiosity rather than an attempt at small talk.

No one in this tower really did small talk.

“I was going to head back to the lab. There’s a couple projects I could be working on.” Bruce glanced back at the door. “My original plan didn’t go as well as I hoped.”

“I think you picked the wrong tower for that.”

Bruce smiled. “Yeah, probably.” There was a pause in which Bucky’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling and Bruce shifted the tablet in his hand before he asked, “How are you doing with it? The…” he gestured vaguely to the tower as a whole “... everything?”

The easiness faded back a bit as Bucky frowned. “Why are you asking?” A hint of suspicion flickered in his eyes, and Bruce fought the urge to look away.

_ Great job, Banner, now he’s gonna hate you. _

Bruce shrugged. “Because I know what it’s like to have a rough adjustment period.”

He suspected that there were other aspects of Bucky Barnes’s situation that he could empathize with, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up, not in their first conversation that hadn’t been “nice to meet you too” or “the pizza’s downstairs if you’re interested.” Probably no one else would even have thought about bringing it up, but Bruce tended to be a downer that way.

And, well… something about the way Bucky looked at him suddenly, with that new light in his eyes… 

His thought process was interrupted at the metallic  _ shink _ that came when Bucky shrugged his own shoulders, copying Bruce’s movement. “I’m doing alright,” he said at last. “My name’s on the Avengers Wikipedia page and everything. And I can’t say I blame them for not sending me out on any missions yet.” His hands poked into his pocket before coming back out to rest on his knees with careful precision.

Bruce hadn’t been sent on a mission lately either—the last time had been, what, that rogue chemical plant developing mutant squids? Indiscriminately destructive rage machines weren’t exactly rolled out for the everyday, the sensitive, or the covert—and since no aliens had attacked the planet lately (barring whatever the  _ hell _ Thor had been up to last November), there wasn’t much call for Bruce as anything other than a physicist. 

Which he infinitely preferred. As he reminded himself whenever he started to feel left out. 

For Bucky, though… for Bucky it was a little more than that, and although Bruce could see so clearly Steve’s desire to keep him out of the chaos, he knew that wouldn’t help Bucky as much as Steve thought it would. 

He hesitated on which one to voice aloud—he hardly knew the guy, after all—but before he could say anything, Bucky lifted his head.

“Hey, maybe I could come by that lab of yours sometime?”

Their entire conversation flipped back through Bruce’s brain like he was rewinding a DVD. He had misjudged. He had misjudged so badly— “You do know who I am, right?”

Bruce had lived in Avengers Tower so long that sometimes he forgot it was just a safe haven, and every venture into the real world reminded him of damage reports and angry headlines and people trying to inconspicuously back away. 

But Bucky wasn’t backing away. He had actually sprawled out a little more, leaning back against the wall with his forearms sliding to rest atop his bent knees. His expression hadn’t changed one inch at Bruce’s question. “Yeah. That’s why I’m betting your lab is the only place around here with some peace and quiet.”

“O-oh. Well, you’re welcome any time.”

* * *

Bruce hadn’t been expecting Barnes to actually take him up on that. 

Surely, once he no longer needed to worry about making polite conversation—and once he realized that maybe Bruce Banner wasn’t exactly anyone’s first choice of people to hang out with—Bucky would brush him off and go back to… whatever he did all day. Training with Natasha or hiding Sam’s laundry or lurking on the roof with Clint or laughing with Steve over some “you had to be there” story about an event that had taken place before any of the others were born, mostly. Other than team dinners—and whatever other bonding activities somebody had decided to stick the word “team” in front of—that was really all Bruce saw of his day-to-day. There would be no reason to change that schedule, not when the Avengers were starting to get overrun with calls to assemble after certain unsavory characters got wind of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s disintegration, and not when Bucky was still settling in, and not when he’d probably forgotten he’d ever spoken to Bruce anyway.

But an hour or so after their next mission—the first one in months that had needed “all hands on deck,” as Steve had put it, with a meaningful glance at Bruce—when Bruce was stubbornly forcing himself to focus on the multicolored vials in front of him instead of the explosions and crashes and shouts echoing in his ears, the door to the lab opened quietly.

Bruce almost knocked over a row of beakers at the sudden noise and looked up with the full intention of telling Tony or Clint or Natasha to  _ come back another time _ , only to find Bucky standing there instead.

Bucky standing there, with his hair a dark slick from the shower and a wool glove covering the metal hand and the bruises from the fight already healing from where they peeked out of his collar. 

Bruce gave the barest nod, and Bucky returned it, stepping further inside without either of them saying a word.

Bucky pulled out a swivel chair and slowly revolved around the lab, and Bruce continued to measure out solutions, resolutely ignoring how his hands were shaking so much he was in danger of dropping the pipette. The quiet held for a long time, which was amazing considering the deafening volume that seemed to echo in his ears every time a piece of lab equipment clinked and sloshed and clattered. 

Bruce was the first one to break the silence, a silence that seemed to have lasted hours. “Could you hand me that?” His voice was lower than usual, and it took every effort to focus his arm steady enough to point across the table. 

A moment later, the flask was in his hand and Bucky was leaning forward on his palms, pointing to a diagram on Bruce’s screen.

“What does that do?”

Bruce pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and explained.

* * *

It became a regular thing. Or semi-regular. Or as regular as two people whose schedules were occasionally dictated by world-saving exploits and the whims of their antagonistic alter egos could get.

The frequency of missions that needed the assembling of all the Avengers died down again—after the bad guys of the world apparently realized that even without S.H.I.E.L.D., there was still a fully functioning team of superheroes prepared to kick their ass, and lest anyone forget:  _ they had a Hulk _ —but Bucky still dropped by the lab on a basis that became more and more frequent as the days went on. 

Company in the lab was… nice. Sure, Bruce had Tony every once in a while, but Tony had multitudinous demands on his time (unlike Bruce himself, whose closest equivalent to real responsibility was the instructions he occasionally got from the star-spangled-tights-wearing ex-WWII soldier), and most of the other Avengers were either similarly too busy or too easily bored by Bruce’s explanation of molecular compounds to go anywhere near the lab. Even his (few and far between) consultations with people like Jane Foster or Helen Cho were via video call. 

That wasn’t to say Bruce was  _ lonely _ . Far from it—he hadn’t been less lonely in years, and even then, it would’ve been hard for him to come up with more than two or three people he talked to on a regular, non-work-related basis, let alone nine. It was hard to feel lonely when sitting at the dinner table surrounded by Thor expansively telling some story that might actually be interesting if anyone else could understand half the words, Natasha preparing her innocent face as Steve clicked on a Rickroll link, Sam betting Clint over something involving grappling arrows and the Falcon wings, and Tony leaning back against Bruce’s shoulder to capture Rhodey in a reluctant group selfie. Being a team didn’t begin and end on the battlefield, and for better or for worse, the Avengers were a team.

Still, he found himself looking forward to Bucky’s visits with an anticipation that he didn’t  _ quite  _ have for the rest of said team.

He didn’t know  _ why _ .

Or what to  _ do _ about it.

But it was there, and it made itself present with a happy shivery feeling every time Bucky waved in greeting or gave him that slight smile or asked him a question about something in the lab.

Bucky asked a lot of questions. Not even questions related to whatever Bruce happened to be working on (the list of people interested in what Bruce was working on was short), but seemingly on whatever had come across his mind. Which sometimes meant the flesh-eating chemical weapon that the latest supervillain had tried to use against the team and sometimes meant the microwave. 

One day, Bruce had been in the middle of an explanation on electron-positron annihilation when Bucky had nodded and asked “So, how does memory wiping work?”

_ Oh no he’s only here because he wants to figure out what Hydra did to his brain— _

But that hadn’t been the case. The two of them had discussed the mind control stuff as much as they could (it wasn’t Bruce’s forte, but he’d been doing some under-the-radar research ever since Bucky had moved in), and then Bucky had gone right back to asking about antibiotics and stem cells and the moon landing. The guy might have claimed to want to learn more about the historical events he’d missed, but Bruce was pretty sure he was talking to an appreciator of the more technical side of things. 

He’d even started to let Bucky be the math-checker instead of JARVIS—his current work wasn’t important enough to panic over a few mistakes that might slip through, and he got the feeling Bucky needed to be trusted with more things.

(And if he’d felt an inexplicable rush of happiness at Bucky’s smile after Bruce had first made the offer—and if that rush hadn’t faded with every time he saw Bucky pored over a chart with his dark hair falling over his face and the light from the screen reflecting his blue eyes—that wasn’t anything to do with it)

(And since when did he care whether Bucky Barnes wanted to hang out with him anyway?)

* * *

Their fingers brushed, once. Bruce dropped a pencil, and it rolled between the legs of Bucky’s chair. With reflexes well-honed by years of combat, Bucky was quick to grab and return it before it could topple off and wedge itself under a desk.

Was it his imagination, or did the touch last longer than necessary?

The moment of eye contact, longer than necessary?

_ I… might be in trouble. _

* * *

Bruce was the last one still aboard the quinjet, his muscles sore from the Code Green and his movements slower than usual as he dug through a compartment for the spare glasses that he was  _ positive  _ he’d left in here. Every other item of clothing he was wearing—which wasn’t much—had all been borrowed from whichever members of the team had forgotten to clean out their section of the cargo hold this week, but he was going to find his own glasses god _ damn _ it where  _ were _ they—

He paused in his rifling through the jumble of mismatched pieces of mission gear, the odd bit of tech, and various personal belongings when he heard the voices talking just outside. 

Both were familiar—of course they were, there was a very limited number of people who had the clearance to stand on the roof of Avengers Tower without getting zapped by something—but it took Bruce a moment to place them.

One voice that held the lilt that his mind still associated with the old movie reels, and one voice that was softer and drier and with that faint roughness that…  _ oh.  _

Bruce wasn’t aware of closing his eyes, but he opened them again just in time to hear Steve reply to the second voice.

“I think that’s great, by the way. With all those science exhibitions you dragged me to when all the other kids were going out—”

“We did plenty of that, too.” Bucky’s grin was almost audible. “It’s a miracle you still can’t dance.”

Steve made a “hmph” noise before continuing. “Well, if you want, we could try to find something like that now. I don’t know if they still have fairs, but there’s always museums… and you could drop in and see what Tony’s working on, but that has to be the absolute last of last resorts; he’ll design you a new arm that’ll shoot miniature explosives while making a blueberry smoothie if you give him half a chance.”

Bucky laughed, but there was a noise like shuffling around, and Bruce got the mental image of Bucky leaning out to look over the balcony. “Nah. I think I’m good with the lab here.”

“Oh.” The surprise in Steve’s voice was palpable, but he didn’t say anything else, and a moment later there was the sound of two sets of footsteps walking away across the rooftop.

Inside the jet, Bruce let out a slow breath and tried not to knock anything over.

* * *

They had to move fast, to get Bucky’s arm detached; there was barely time to stumble up to the lab before the hiss of steaming metal filled the air. Their last battle—about a week or so after the incident in the quinjet—had been against some kind of mutated acid-spitting monsters, and from what Bruce could tell of the half-dazed mumblings coming out of Bucky’s mouth, he’d tried to use his arm as a shield, with disastrous consequences. 

Bucky practically fell onto the lab bench as Bruce worked at the seam, both of them eyeing the rapidly spreading patch of acid doing its best to eat its way up to Bucky’s shoulder before something finally released and the arm fell with a clatter onto the table.

They stared at it for a moment before Bruce shook himself and headed over to the opposite wall cabinet.

“There should be something in here to neutralize whatever that was,” he called over his shoulder amid the clink of bottles. He thought Bucky nodded, but he wasn’t sure. “If it was your other arm, that would be a different story, but this is a pretty easy fix.”

He came back to the table, looking quickly at Bucky’s inscrutable expression before he focused again on unscrewing the bottle cap. “Honestly, Tony probably could’ve handled this; I’m not sure why you came to me.”  _ Why you come to me at all. Why you ever bother to spend your time with a disgraced nuclear physicist who’s also a part-time rage monster and the reason why the Avengers’ public approval ratings never make it above fifty percent.  _

_ Well. One of the reasons. Steve and Natasha and Sam did just try to fight the government, after all.  _

_ But that’s not the point.  _

Bucky tore his eyes away from the arm on the table and fixed Bruce with a look that would’ve made him take a step back if he hadn’t been pouring out a bottle of chemicals. Seemingly realizing this, his expression softened, settling to lines that were oddly casual, given the circumstances. “We’re not so different, you know.” He shrugged, a movement made off-kilter by the single arm. “You avoid getting angry and I avoid the eighth most spoken language on the planet.”

Was that a smile? 

Bruce forced himself to pay attention to what he was doing. “Did you happen to get hit on the head in that fight, by any chance?”

“Don’t think so.” And he was still  _ doing _ it, that insufferable—

“Why are you smiling?” Bruce finally asked, unable to take it anymore. He gestured to the setup on the table with rubber-gloved-hands. “Your arm just got sprayed with acid, how are you not freaking out right now?”

“Because you’re holding my hand?” Bucky offered.

Bruce followed Bucky’s gaze to the metal arm, which he’d been tilting from side to side to make sure he’d gotten rid of all the acid. He felt his face heat up and muttered, “Quit distracting me.”

“Sure thing.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this?”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m some guy you picked up off the street.”

“Technically, we both are.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

* * *

The team dinner was going as normal: several voices talking at once, the scrape of chairs back and forth as people stood up to reach for more food, JARVIS occasionally chiming in in the background. Tony was sitting on Rhodey’s lap, Sam and Natasha were swapping near-death-experience stories, and Steve was attempting to give a lecture to an audience of… basically just Clint, who almost definitely didn’t have his hearing aids in. 

No, the others were too preoccupied to pay much attention to Bucky’s and Bruce’s chairs pushed together, or to Bruce leaning over to steal the ketchup from one of the world’s most infamous assassins with no reaction other than a sparkling grin. 

They were also too preoccupied to notice the clasped hands resting just under the table.

* * *

“Hey. Hey, wake up. Wake up.”

“What? What’s going—”

“Shh. It’s okay, I promise.”

“Did anybody—”

“No. It’s just us.”

“... what is that you’re doing?”

“It’s a calming technique. Natasha taught it to me.”

“Oh. Don’t stop.”

* * *

Avenging was cold and snowy work in the middle of December, and this stakeout business didn’t exactly prioritize shelter and comfort. The temperature had been dropping all week, and the jokes about Captain America getting frozen a second time were almost as plentiful as the snowflakes cascading down around them.

And so no one gave it a second thought when two of their teammates huddled up together beneath a blanket: one warm from the radiation churning through his veins and one numb from decades of cryogenics.

* * *

“—and someone’s gotta say it: that shade of purple is really  _ not _ your color, Barnes.” Tony took another sip from the nearly-overflowing coffee mug in his hand and gestured broadly to Bucky from the other side of the kitchen. “I’m getting flashbacks to the time you literally lived under a bridge.”

Bruce quickly took a sip from his own mug as Bucky grinned. His hands were shoved in the front pocket of a sweatshirt that was slightly too small. 

Later, Bruce found a note taped to his computer monitor—scribbly handwriting that read  _ Thx 4 the shirt. _

He grinned, pulling out his phone to type out a text:  _ U better wash it before u give it back. _

_ <3 _

* * *

“Was that too loud?”

“Nah, the walls in here are pretty reinforced.”

“Alright. I’m just imagining Steve’s face if he walked in and found us like this.”

“Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t emphasize how much I  _ don’t _ want to think about Steve Rogers right now.”

* * *

Bruce bent forward slightly to take another sip. The straw clinked against his teeth—Stark Industries’ commitment to clean energy also extended to the lack of plastic straws anywhere in the tower—but the milkshake was good: chocolatey and cold.

Useful, incidentally, to combat the rising heat in his cheeks.

Bucky was watching him from across the table, a smile poking at the corners of his mouth. His hair was pulled back except for a few strands that were too short for the ponytail holder. He waited for Bruce to finish before he asked, “And?”

Bruce blinked. “And what?”

“How is it?” Bucky rolled his hand before taking a sip from his own straw.

“Growing on me.” Bruce glanced down to where the two straws met, nearly entwining in the single glass. “Although I thought you skipped the 1950s.”

“I meant the shake, Bruce.”

Bruce grinned. “Oh, that? It’s—”

The door slid open with a mechanical click, the only warning before Tony Stark strode inside, mumbling arguments to JARVIS and blinking at the bright light. There was a stripe of oil down his T-shirt covering up the A in AC/DC, another sign pointing to him coming straight from the workshop.

Bruce’s knee reflexively spasmed, bumping Bucky’s leg under the table. Bucky nearly choked on milkshake before he turned around and his eyes went wide.

It was at that moment that Tony’s gaze fell on the two of them and from there to the single glass of milkshake on the table. His brow furrowed in obvious confusion.

Bruce supposed this situation would’ve been objectively funny, had he not been a participant. As it was, he took a deep breath and steeled himself for the inevitable.

And then Tony frowned. “You guys know the dishes are clean, right?”

The deep breath that Bruce had just taken seemed to whoosh out in a sigh of relief. He risked a glance at Bucky, whose eyes had somehow, impossibly, gotten wider, before he remembered how to form words. “Uh, right. Thanks.”

Tony shook his head before pulling open a cupboard and rummaging in it. The sound of crinkling almost muffled his mutterings about “hopeless” and “absolute vagrants, all of them.”

Once he left the room, Bruce and Bucky refrained from sharing a look. The risk was too high that they would both start laughing if they met each other’s eyes.

They did, however, finish sharing the milkshake.

* * *

The Avengers were having a Christmas party.

Bruce didn’t really know the reason—other than the obvious—but anything sponsored by Tony Stark inevitably ended up in a party sooner or later.

He had to admit, though, that the parties at the tower were a vast improvement over any he’d been to in the past—all pre-gamma-incident, of course—even if that wasn’t saying much. His standards of “nice” ranged from not-spending-the-whole-time-lurking-in-the-corner-with-a-lukewarm-cup-of-punch to speaking-with-another-person-about-something-other-than-isopropanol-cloud-chambers to actually-leaving-the-car. 

This, though… this was nice. 

It was a small gathering by most standards: only ten people. And two robots with Santa hats. Some Christmas carol was playing from… somewhere, but the sounds of talking and laughing and the crackling from that eerily realistic fake fireplace drowned it out just enough to make the song unrecognizable. Bruce wasn’t even sure how many of the team celebrated Christmas (he didn’t, not in years), but this party was almost certainly the product of one genius billionaire playboy philanthropist and one genius billionaire playboy philanthropist only.

Although the party had supposedly only started three minutes ago, the other Avengers had already managed to drape themselves in various places around the room. Clint was dangling off the balcony for no reason that Bruce could see, unless he was trying to reach the top of the Christmas tree. Natasha and Sam were laughing, possibly about the aforementioned Clint in the tree, and Natasha had her phone up like she was recording. Sam was wearing the brightest snowman sweater Bruce had ever seen in his life. 

Over on the couch, Tony and Pepper and Rhodey were sprawled practically on top of each other despite the vast amounts of available empty space. Mostly-emptied cups were in all of their hands, and although Bruce couldn’t hear through the assorted party noise, he was pretty sure Tony was trying to sing along to whatever song was playing.  _ Trying _ being the operative word.

Thor was hovering nearby, absently licking a candy cane and swaying back and forth to the music. He beckoned Steve forward to join him, but Steve just laughed and made the universal gesture for if-I-was-drunker-I-would-but-I-haven’t-gotten-drunk-since-1940. 

It was into this scene that Bruce entered as he stepped through the doorway.

Or tried to step through the doorway, anyway. 

As he made his attempt, he promptly bumped into someone going the other way, and there were a few moments of confused shuffling before he realized it was Bucky. 

“Sorry.” Bruce grinned. “Didn’t see you there.”

Bucky returned it, albeit a hint more teasingly. “Watch where you’re going, Banner.”

Bruce ghosted a touch against Bucky’s side before making to continue into the main room and—

It was Thor. Of course it was Thor. 

Thor, whose  _ literally _ thundering voice caught the attention of the whole room as he called out, “Hey, they’re under the mistletoe!” without pausing a beat in his dance.

Bruce didn’t think it was possible to hear that sentence and  _ not _ look up at the ceiling. So that’s what he did. Dimly, he was aware of Bucky doing the same,

They saw exactly what they expected to see. There it was: small and green and probably plastic, but that apparently didn’t matter to Thor or to the roomful of people who were suddenly simultaneously fighting back laughter. From the excitement in Thor’s voice, Bruce would bet that someone (Sam) had told him about mistletoe as a joke, and he’d been waiting all night for someone to walk under it.

Tony was just drunk enough to be the first to react. “Yesssss! This’ll be hot.” Next to him, Pepper was giggling into Rhodey’s shoulder.

There was a crash as Clint, predictably, fell off the balcony laughing, but at least he didn’t knock into the tree on his way down. Natasha was laughing now, too, but Bruce wasn’t sure whether it was at them or at Clint—who popped up behind a couch a second later with messed-up hair and an “I’m okay!” that everyone ignored. At first glance, Sam didn’t seem to be having trouble keeping a straight face, but Bruce could’ve sworn that that cup he was drinking out of had been empty a second earlier. 

Steve was the only one left coherent, and so he was the only one to step forward, looking between Bruce and Bucky, who hadn’t moved from the doorway. 

From under the mistletoe. 

“You guys know you don’t have to, right?” Steve asked. “Not if you’re… uncomfortable.”

Bruce could practically see his and Bucky’s collective issues parading through Steve’s star-spangled brain, but he didn’t say anything.

He just turned to Bucky, who opened his arms to pull Bruce in like it was the easiest thing in the world. 

And then they were kissing under the mistletoe, and it would have been the cheesiest thing Bruce had ever done if he hadn’t voluntarily watched Steve’s old war propaganda.

He reached up to cup the back of Bucky’s head as Bucky leaned down, his arms curling to wrap Bruce like a blanket. The metal hand was gentle as it brushed down Bruce’s back, its coolness sending a shiver up his spine, and Bruce pressed further into the kiss.

They finally pulled away, and Bruce didn’t think he’d ever seen so many jaws simultaneously dropped. 

Tony’s voice was betrayed. “You guys didn’t say you were dating!” 

Bruce shrugged, but his eyes were still on Bucky. “I wasn’t sure we were.”

“I thought we were,” Bucky said.

Their gazes held for another moment, and Bruce realized with a slow smile that neither of them had bothered to unclasp their arms from around each other’s waists.

After all, the mistletoe wasn’t going anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky, from the 1940s: what do you mean we aren't dating we kissed at least twice??
> 
> Bruce, has slept with all of the avengers at some point, knows perfectly well what a fuck buddy is: idk i didn't want to assume
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
